Kogonada's Secret Hong Kong Film 'Zi' Gets U.S. Trailer Ahead of November 6 Release

Kogonada's secret Hong Kong-shot film zi opens at Metrograph in New York on November 6, distributed by Grasshopper Film, and the U.S. trailer has now arrived. The film premiered at Sundance earlier this year.

The project marks a sharp pivot for the filmmaker. After his debut Columbus and the sci-fi tale After Yang, Kogonada moved into big-budget territory with A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, a romantic fantasy that The Film Stage judged misguided — a film that, despite having its heart in the right place, failed to connect.

How was 'zi' made?

Kogonada responded by stripping everything back. He traveled to Hong Kong with a few of his closest collaborators to shoot a new film off the cuff and in secret, aiming for something more spontaneous and free from complex studio logistics. The result runs roughly in the lineage of his three prior features: Columbus (2017 Sundance Film Festival), After Yang (2020 Sundance Film Festival) and A Big Bold Beautiful Journey.

The cast reunites Kogonada regulars Michelle Mao, Haley Lu Richardson and Jin Ha, who portray, in the Sundance synopsis's words, "transitory misfits, grappling with a clever fusion of existential anxiety, romantic misgiving, and personal memory."

What is the film about?

The Sundance synopsis lays out the premise: "In Hong Kong, a young woman haunted by visions of her future self meets a stranger who changes the course of her night — and possibly her life."

The synopsis describes zi as "a sensitive cinematic poem" and "a film with soul and a wavelike confidence that commits to recursivity as a mode and central theme," set within "a stylish jaunt through the streets of Hong Kong." It situates the work "somewhere between sci-fi and supernatural," where "a deep, easy warmth takes root."

Kogonada's approach, per the synopsis, is deliberately contained: the film explores "a pervasive sense of unmooring, yet cultivating an unrelenting sense of peace," and invites viewers to "surrender to Kogonada's truly indie world of temporal fragmentation." In plain terms: a small-scale experiment about time, memory and connection rather than a studio spectacle.

What did the Sundance review say?

Jordan Raup's Sundance review for The Film Stage offered a qualified verdict: "Not a return to form so much as a diversion into purely instinct-based experimentation, the resulting zi feels different from anything he's made before, a free-flowing fount of passions and fears examining both the past slipping away and an uncertain future, while also doubling as a poetic city symphony."

Raup added a caveat: "While not fully engaging on a narrative level, the project at least demonstrates Kogonada hasn't lost his filmmaking mojo, crafting a movie that may seem more personal to him than most viewers."

The takeaway: zi is a career reset made on instinct, not a commercial rebound. Its November 6 Metrograph opening will test whether a film shot in secret, outside studio logistics, can find the audience its predecessor missed.